Super Furry Animals -- "Mwng" (Placid Casual)
Their warped imaginations proffer a bent reality, a Dali-like melting pot of madness; they adorn their album covers with exotic monstrosities that are both cute and menacing. They are totally fuzzy. They are the Super Furry Animals, they don't play by the rules and we love them all the more for it.
The Furries are renowned for their eclectism. On each of their three previous studio albums, idyllic -- if a little warped -- folk is mixed with punk-pop and then sewn together in a surreal mishmash of hysterical multicolored psychedelia. All the albums are vital, and I guess the main reason the Furries consistently deliver, is that there are five of them and each freely inputs ideas, unlike the usual situation where the guitarist writes all the tunes and runs out of ideas after two albums. Being a gang comprised of equals also helps to keep their feet on the ground, their minds focused; there's no room for the self-indulgence or self-importance that is born of a single bloated ego.
"Mwng" (a Welsh word meaning "the mane of an animal" in English), is, ironically, the Furries' biggest surprise yet: It's a collection of straightforward but sublime folk-rock tunes, with none of the trademark weirdness. Even the cover is a simple black and white drawing. It's also sung entirely in Welsh, a blatant "up-yours" to the establishment (which, in Britain, dictates that no album can be a hit unless it's sung in English; "Mwng" entered the U.K. charts at No.12: cool!) and wonderfully appropriate, because Welsh is a rich, velvety language that wraps these mainly acoustic ballads in another thick rug of beauty. As for the future, well, who knows what they'll come up with next? A techno album? Well, erm, yeh, actually. The Super Furries are promising to release a full-on dance record later this year. But before that, don't miss these incorrigible rogues at the Fuji Rock Festival next month.